| This yearlong qualitative dissertation took place in two first grade classrooms led by novice teachers in a low socioeconomic area of New York City, where nearly a third of the students were bilingual. Within this setting, teachers followed the routines of a scripted phonics curriculum; yet, they also engaged students in social interactions about words (and their associated orthographic, phonological and semantic inconsistencies). Findings call attention to word recognition events went "off script" and were situated in students' funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 2001). In this study, the "basic process" of decoding held meaning, which has implications for the way research and practice consider word recognition as a problem-solving process, situated in children's sociocultural and linguistic backgrounds. Specifically, by analyzing field notes, interviews, lesson transcripts, photographs, and documents related to word recognition events, this dissertation presents ways in which students leveraged their linguistic and sociocultural knowledge to make sense of decoding processes. In an effort to do a project with students rather than on them, data analyzed also include illustrations that students produced about their own thinking. Traditionally, two distinct theoretical orientations--the Cognitive and the Sociocultural—have underpinned various debates about the nature of literacy and about what kinds of instructional objectives (i.e. skills vs. meaning) are necessary for beginning reading instruction. My study does not affirm a particular pedagogical approach; rather, using ideas from both theoretical camps, it documents and affirms the ingenuity of students and teachers alike as they navigated word recognition experiences. |
